Saffron Fields

Name: Saffron Fields

Gender: Female

Age: 18

Grade: 12th

School: George Hunter High School

Hobbies and Interests: Dance, acoustic and instrumental music, gemstones

Appearance: 5'8" and 127 pounds, Saffron possesses the lithe frame of a dancer. She is biracial, with a white father and a black mother, and her own skin tone borrows from her mother's dark caramel complexion. Her long, thin limbs are very dexterous and flexible, enabling her to perform the maneuvers that she bases her life's work around. Her posture is always impeccable, even when relaxed and away from training, giving the impression that she is even taller than she really is. Of particular note is her left hand. She was born with it partially paralyzed due to damaged nerves in her index and ring fingers, which are always curled inward towards her palm, leaving her with only three usable fingers on that hand. As a result, she generally leaves it idle unless absolutely necessary.

Her face embodies strong feminine features. Her cheekbones are high, and her brow is thin and refined. Her light hazel-colored eyes sit on either side of a long, yet dainty nose. Her jaw leads to a faintly pointed chin, with the lower half of her face being shaped vaguely like an inverse triangle. She has red hair tied into a long ponytail that reaches just past her mid-back and judging by the difference between it and her dark eyebrows, it is clearly dyed.

Saffron's fashion sense is flashy and eye-catching, partially due to personal preference, and partially to draw attention away from her paralyzed hand by emphasizing the rest of her body. Sleeves and long pants are a rarity for her outside the winter months, as she prefers to show off her arms and legs. Eclectic colors and accessories are another mainstay of her wardrobe.

On the day of the abduction, Saffron was wearing a light green tank top, shorts in a darker, earthier green, a brown woven wristband on her right wrist, tan sandals, and a string necklace with a piece of amethyst as a pendant.

Biography: Dave Fields and Kayla Horne were one of those couples who everyone knew were going to end up together. They were high school sweethearts who were absolutely wild about each other and the fact that they got married only a month after graduation was no surprise to any of their friends. A few years after the fact, Saffron Fields was born into a house full of love.

Saffron was exposed to her parents' love of the arts early on, as in addition to their own careers, they also actively pursued their artistic hobbies. Dave was a cook who also practiced the acoustic guitar in his spare time, and Kayla was an accountant who also dabbled in painting. Saffron latched onto this, and her continual exposure to the arts during her formative years led to her developing a creative mind of her own. Growing up with a musician in the house naturally gave her an appreciation for music, particularly the acoustic guitar that her father played. He was by no means a professional, but his skills were solid enough to play a few pleasant songs, which were appreciated by the rest of the family. As she grew up, Saffron attained a taste for many forms of music, but the simple acoustic style has always held a special place in her heart, because it was what she grew up listening to.

Her early days in school were not very easy, and her paralyzed hand was a common target for elementary school bullies to pick at with uncreative insults and mocking gestures. Not being a highly reactive person by nature, Saffron chose to withdraw rather than fight, and her school experience became a very lonely one. Fortunately for her, her parents were able to step in and help her deal with her issues. They taught her how to get around the limitations of her nonfunctional fingers, and that her hand in no way makes her any less important or valid than her classmates. Their aid helped her to develop thicker skin about the taunts of others, but her sensitivity regarding her hand has persisted to the present day.

As Saffron grew up, she began to take an interest in gemstones. She had heard about specific stones having various properties, and that crystals had some sort of healing abilities. She was skeptical of these claims, but she was nonetheless taken in by the beauty of the crystals. She started a small collection of gemstones and crystals, most of which wound up occupying a display shelf in her room that she maintains with care. The core of this collection would be a set of necklaces with gemstones at the end, among which the amethyst was her favorite, and as a result, the one she wore most often.

In third grade, she became involved with an art of her own, and she chose dance. Intrigued by watching dance routines on TV, she wanted to try to learn the craft for herself, so her parents signed up for lessons. What she found was a difficult hobby that required intense concentration, but that didn't deter her. She was still enthralled by the movements of the professionals, and she wanted to be able to follow in their footsteps and create art with no tools aside from her own body. The fact that it was a full-body exercise that would emphasize her movements as a whole instead of drawing attention to her hand was just a bonus.

She studied and practiced dance with great enthusiasm and intensity, and although she had a difficult start with learning her routines at first, her determination started to pay off in major dividends. Her immense focus and drive to do things right led to her pulling off her routines with aplomb, channeling all of her hard work into her onstage performance. In middle school, she began to enter dance competitions, and it didn't take much time before she became a name to watch on the scene, her fluid and precise movements frequently scoring high marks with the judges. She has a couple of wins under her belt, but she has yet to compete at any event higher than state level, since she doesn't yet feel comfortable with major out-of-state travel.

Saffron's chosen field of dance is contemporary. She briefly studied ballet, but she ultimately went in a more free-form style rather than rigidly sticking to what she learned in one specific field. She has tried to take elements from various styles that she likes when she feels that they could fit into her routines, with various degrees of success. The ever-shifting pattern of her routines is held in place by one specific aspect, and that is the grace with which she moves. The way she dances is incredibly fluid, breezily gliding from one motion to the next. That has been the biggest aid when it comes to her performances. As of late, she has been experimenting with incorporating more hip-hop stylings into her moveset, but she hasn't taken any of those efforts to a formal recital as of yet.

With Saffron's love for dance comes a passion for music as well. Growing up, she would frequently listen to her dad play his guitar, and his enthusiasm for his instrument meant that she had many opportunities to do just that. Hearing his acoustic guitar all throughout her childhood gave her a solid appreciation for the instrument, which remains her favorite. However, her tastes in music are similar to her tastes in dance in that they are varied and eclectic. She listens to many genres, often to find tracks to dance to, and has a particular fondness for instrumental music. She has built up a significant collection of songs that she listens to on a regular basis, and she likes to listen to a different one each day on the way to school.

With high school coming around, Saffron's personality developed quite far from the shyness of her youth thanks to a growth of confidence from her dancing experience. In school and other social situations, she maintains a perpetually calm air about herself, rarely seeming particularly emotional about one thing or the other, and just going along with the flow more often than not. At the same time, she is very warm and affectionate towards the people she cares about. The main break in her chill, friendly air comes from people who have gone out of her way to needle her. In those situations, she becomes extremely passive-aggressive and biting, using harsh, dismissive comments to ward off the sources of her bother.

When it comes to dance though, her personality is entirely different. Whether it be training or a performance, her attitude towards it is nothing but cold focus and professionalism. She sets her mind intently on her routine and does not allow her mind to waver until she is finished. The difference between her businesslike demeanor over her dances and her everyday easygoing nature is very clear and quite telling about just how serious she is about her art.

An issue that strikes an odd nerve with her is the way that sexual issues are frequently handled. She considers it weird that so many people view sex and anything related to it as an absolute taboo. Saffron herself is pansexual, and she is fully secure in her identity. In her view, sex is a way for people to share themselves with someone that they care about very much, and that is the way she treats it, having slept with a couple of very close friends in the past and still maintaining strong friendships with them. Although this may lead some people to think she is promiscuous, she is generally quite chaste in her dating life as she is still often in the process of feeling out most of the people that she asks out.

Her relationship with her parents has not weakened over the years. If anything, it has become stronger than before. Being naturally open-minded people, they are fully supportive of her sexuality, and they are willing to accept anyone that she wishes to bring into their lives as long as they are good to her. They are vocally encouraging of her dance aspirations as well, always wishing to support the arts in any form, especially when the artist is their own daughter.

Saffron's performance in school is generally average. Her grades lean better in classes that don't prominently feature essays as opposed to ones that do, since she is much better at expressing herself through actions than the written word. She takes a lot of joy in music class, since being able to flow to the rhythm that she and the other students create is something that she finds very calming. On the other end of the spectrum, she does not like math at all, since she finds the large amount of equations to be frustrating to deal with. Socially, she is something of a butterfly, able to get along cordially with many people. But although her social net is wide, she still prefers to spend the majority of her time with a few people that she is particularly close to, which can be a hassle sometimes with her training taking up more and more of her time. The only people in school who she will not associate with are those who are openly bigoted, and considering that she is both biracial and LGBT, she doubts that they would want to have anything to do with her either.

Saffron has kept her grades at an average to good level consistently, and she does have ambitions of going to college for theater. She plans to pay for it by joining a dance troupe after graduation, and she already has her eyes set on a local studio that she knows is scouting for new talent. As long as she stays in shape, she's confident that she'll be able to succeed.

Advantages: Thanks to her constant dance training, Saffron's fitness is at an exquisite level, and she is in better shape than most of her grade. Her generally easygoing personality and circle of close friends would also be a boon in avoiding confrontations as long as she is dealing with reasonable parties.

Disadvantages: Saffron's paralyzed hand would prevent her from using any weapon or tool that requires two hands effectively, including almost all firearms. Her long hair could also be a disadvantage in a fight, giving her adversaries a painful target to grab. Her tendency to become passive-aggressive when stressed or annoyed could also inflame tensions at an inopportune time.

Designated Number: Female student No. 050

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Designated Weapon: Pool cue

Conclusion: A girl with one hand and a particularly shiny stick... should I notify your next-of-kin for you, G050, or would you like to give your own eulogy to one of our waiting cameras? - Jim Greynolds

'The above biography is as written by Aura. No edits or alterations to the author's original work have been made.'

Evaluations
Handled by: Aura

Kills: None

Killed By: Erika Stieglitz

Collected Weapons: Pool cue (assigned weapon)

Allies: Arizona Butler, Yuki Hayashibara, Katie Agustien

Enemies: None

Mid-game Evaluation: 

Post-Game Evaluation: 

Memorable Quotes:

Threads
Below are a list of threads containing Saffron, in chronological order:

V7 Pregame:
 * Flames on the Blue
 * Dance of Discipline
 * Glitter and Gold

V7:
 * Dead Bxdies in the Lake
 * I'm A Fucking Unicxrn
 * No Center
 * I've been waiting for that kind of lie, satisfaction guaranteed
 * Tempest of Seasons
 * Zero Sum

Your Thoughts
''Whether you were a fellow handler in SOTF or just an avid reader of the site, we'd like to know what you thought about Saffron Fields. What did you like, or dislike, about the character? Let us know here!''
 * To some extent, a lot of what I just wrote about Katie applies to Saffron too. The girls have a nice relationship, I appreciate that it builds from nothing, and I think there's some solid conservation of detail in that it is also the most important part of their in-game stories. One key difference, however, has to do with the pacing; Katie has a number of threads that don't feature Saffron, while Saffron's Pregame consists only of her two interactions with Katie and a one-shot between them. I do wish we'd gotten to know her just a bit more outside that context, especially because she's the quieter and calmer of the pair, the ice to Katie's fire. Generally speaking, a more restrained, low-key character is harder to establish in a short space, because their traits are often better displayed in what they don't do and how they play off of others, while an assertive character who runs hot can bring those aspects into play very quickly and without much help through a couple big oomph scenes.

In-game, Saffron falls in with a group consisting of Arizona Butler and Yuki Hayashibara, and they have a few small encounters, notably meetings with Caroline Ford and Lizzie Lebowski. The tricky thing here is that Saffron is a relatively restrained, level-headed character who likes to talk through things before acting, and Yuki is similar, and Arizona is dealing with her own issues and keeping most of her conflict to herself. This leaves their scenes often in a lower gear than they perhaps could be, with drama quickly diffusing in the face of reasonable people giving each other the benefit of the doubt. It's a pretty solid survival strategy, but when it kicks in repeatedly in succession, it doesn't always make for the most dynamic reading.

Fortunately, Saffron's narrative figures this out pretty quickly, and she manages to get separated from the group. Better still, it's not some arbitrary accident; Arizona ditches, and Saffron, not realizing what's going on, tries to catch up to her and fails. This lets her pivot into the second half of her story, where she reunites with Katie, which is really strong character work and tragedy. Katie and Saffron set out together, but fall prey to Erika twice in a row. First off, Katie is baited into a fight with Tyrell Lahti, Erika's boyfriend, based on incomplete information from the girl at the start of her own game. Saffron gets to have a lot more agency here, becoming unnerved by Katie's violence and preventing her from killing Ty. Instead, the girls depart, only to soon find Julien Leblanc injured on the ground, the victim of an unseen assailant—Erika herself.

So far removed from the moment, some of what comes next has lost a little of its shocking nature, but the scene is executed well enough that it doesn't suffer for that. Katie was slated to die, but Saffron was not. And yet, both girls come under fire, and ultimately both are killed, Saffron unrolled. At the time, I thought it might go that way, given how very well the narrative was setting such an event up, but to see it actually play out was something special regardless. It takes a certain bravery to pull the plug early, especially on a character who was intended to go further; I think that, had Katie not been rolled, the pair would've had plenty more adventures ahead of them. I usually push against the idea that characters have to die at any particular spot to be good, but I think sometimes there's a natural termination point beyond which the difficulty of sticking the landing increases drastically, and I think Aura really cannily identified Katie's death as a spot where Saffron could perish tragically as well for maximum impact. While she was the quieter, less center-stage of the couple in most of their scenes, just due to the abruptness and unexpected nature her death here is a real scene-stealing gut punch, part of a strong tradition of V7 surprises, and I think it's one of the iconic moments of narrative bravery in the version. - MurderWeasel